Bithumb mobilizes to recover mistakenly paid Bitcoin, considers legal action if funds are not returned

[Financial News] Bithumb has launched a broad set of measures to recover all of the Bitcoin it mistakenly distributed due to an operational error. The company is also reportedly discussing possible legal action in case some users refuse to return the funds.
A Bithumb representative said on the 9th, "We are contacting, one by one, customers who received Bitcoin and immediately disposed of it, persuading them to return it and coordinating how this will be done."
On the evening of the 6th, around 7 p.m., Bithumb had planned to distribute rewards worth a total of about 620,000 won to 249 winners of its Random Box event. However, the currency unit was mistakenly entered as Bitcoin instead of won, and 620,000 units of Bitcoin were allocated.
Bithumb suspended trading and withdrawals on the affected accounts 35 minutes after discovering the incident. By then, however, some winners had already quickly disposed of 1,788 units of Bitcoin.
According to the financial authorities, 86 users were found to have sold the mistakenly credited coins.
Bithumb succeeded in recovering most of the sold Bitcoin in the form of won or other virtual assets. As of 4:30 a.m. on the 7th, however, the company had yet to retrieve the equivalent of 125 units of Bitcoin, worth about 13 billion won at current prices.
Among this amount, cash of around 3 billion won is believed to have been withdrawn by dozens of users to their personal bank accounts. The remaining roughly 10 billion won is thought to have been used in the meantime to purchase other virtual assets such as Altcoins.
Industry observers generally believe that, because the erroneous Bitcoin payments are similar to typical mistaken remittances, Bithumb should be able to recover the funds if it proceeds with full-scale legal action.
At the time of the Random Box event, Bithumb had announced that prize money would range from 2,000 to 50,000 won per person. On that basis, recipients of large amounts of Bitcoin are deemed to have been fully able to recognize that this constituted "unjust enrichment."
If the company prevails in a lawsuit to reclaim unjust enrichment, customers may be required not only to return the proceeds from selling the Bitcoin but also to cover Bithumb's legal fees.
However, opinions are divided over whether customers who misappropriated the Bitcoin could face criminal punishment.
In a similar case, the Supreme Court of Korea in December 2021 upheld an acquittal for a defendant, identified as A, who had been indicted after transferring mistakenly remitted Bitcoin worth about 1.4 billion won to another of his own accounts.
At the time, the court stated, "Virtual assets are not treated in law as equivalent to legal tender," and added, "It does not follow that they must be protected in the same way as legal tender when applying the Criminal Act."


hsg@fnnews.com Reporter Han Seung-gon Reporter